I-TEAM investigates how Cleveland officer charged with attempted child kidnapping became a cop

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CLEVELAND – The FOX 8 I-TEAM has uncovered more information about the Cleveland Police officer charged with trying to kidnap a child and now we’re investigating how he got selected to be a cop.

Cleveland City Hall released some training records for officer Solomon Nhiwatiwa. He’s been indicted for trying to kidnap a 12-year-old girl from a bus stop in Euclid. Investigators say he even urinated on the child.

So, were there warning signs one of Cleveland’s finest would end up indicted for chilling crimes?

Nhiwatiwa graduated out of the Cleveland Police Academy in 2014. Records show mostly high marks.

He went through a little retraining, but we saw nothing that screamed out, ‘They hired that guy?’

But, City Hall did not release all of the records requested by the I-TEAM and dozens of pages were sent to us blacked out and marked ‘trade secret’. A spokesman tells us that all of the blacked out pages involve a civil service exam.

Recently, the suspect’s girlfriend sat down with the I-TEAM and said, “He loves his job and he wanted to help people.”

However, we also recently revealed Nhiwatiwa had already been suspended on the job three times — punished for not checking on someone in distress, not using his body camera and being disrespectful.

Still, his girlfriend sees the officer with the high marks in training.

“Once he got to work, he did his job. He made sure everyone was safe. He was never, ‘I don’t want to go to work,'” she added.

The I-TEAM has also revealed how Nhiwatiwa is asking a judge to make it easier for him to get out of jail on bond.

But Cuyahoga County Prosecutors are fighting it. Records just filed show they have “…confirmed his identity through witnesses and DNA evidence,” tying the officer to that sickening crime with the child.